Am I the victim or perpetrator of emotional abuse in my marriage?

[MatchDullness]

AIBU to want to see my aging parents?
Am I the perpetrator or victim of emotional abuse?
Should I stay in my 25 year + relationship or should I go?

My wife and I are in our mid-fifties, I have severely limited contact with my parents and sister. Our young teenage sons have only seen my parents twice in their lives. My wife forbids contact saying they have always put her down, set an appalling example that the boys should not be exposed to and that if I want more contact I should leave her – in which case I can have free access to the boys provided I never introduce them to my parents and sister.

I am at my wits end, my parents are in their early eighties and aging fast, not being in contact with them them is having a corrosive effect on me, my wife says having contact would be intolerable for her reiterating that I have a choice, honor her, my marriage and our children or leave to have the contact with my parents and sister. She is very scathing about my pain, citing the fact her parents are dead and she has had cancer for which she blames the shock of discovering I had been having covert contact with my parents and sister. She tells me I should focus on what I have and get on with life with her in the same way that she gets on with hers. She feels emotionally abused, I do too.

I have tried to put the pain of separation from my parents and sister out of my mind, getting on with my wife by adopting Le Carre’s Maria Ostrakova’s mantra for withstanding interrogation; “Never to match rudeness with rudeness, never to be provoked, never to score, never to be witty or superior or intellectual, never to be deflected by fury, or despair or the sudden hope that an occasional question might arouse. To match dullness with dullness and routine with routine. And only deep deep down to preserve the secrets that make the humiliation bearable” – but I don’t do it well and now find the situation intolerable.

If anyone has any advice or comment to make I’d welcome it, there is of course a long story behind the current impasse – I’ve written it up trying to be fair to my wife though obviously it reflects my perspective, It runs to over 8000 words – I’m new to discussion sites but suspect that is too much for one post but if anyone is up for reading it let me know.

Thanks

Jonathan

The last thing you should do is have counselling together. It sounds like you both have significant issues and I think you need to work them out individually.

It's difficult to get a handle what's going on here without seeing the two of you.

There's no way anyone here can evaluate your wife's claims that your parents put her down. It may that she's insecure about her background and saw condescension where there was none or at least none intended.

If she really believes that you and your parents have emotionally abused her, why hasn't she left?

There are so many unknowns here, but one certainty is that she is completely wrong to 'forbid' you to see your parents. That is deeply controlling and manipulative, and given their age, unethical. Another is to blame the shock of finding out you were in contact for her cancer. Again, deeply manipulative. And quite potty tbh.

You need to consider why you have let yourself be controlled by her and why you find it so hard to stand up to her.

I was skeptical when my wife laid this on me but she is adamant that her consultants support her argument

You know this is crap right? No consultant would ever make that kind of speculation?

I was skeptical when my wife laid this on me but she is adamant that her consultants support her argument

You know this is crap right? No consultant would ever make that kind of speculation?

Right so you have to adopt someone's strategy for dealing with interrogation by a wartime enemy just to co-exist with your wife?

Whoever is abusive or not, surely this means you really shouldn't be with her, or even like her? I don't know whether this is justified or not, but it actually doesn't matter, you are not happy.

You have the right to leave a relationship you are very unhappy in you know.

Just separate, really.

No sure why that posted double

It sounds as though you have been in a very messed up relationship for a long time. I would do counselling asap, just to bring a 3rd party from the real world (but choose carefully) into what sounds like the closed, warped world that you inhabit. You can then start to consider whether to leave your wife or call her bluff or something else.

Bloody hell, just leave. You're clearly both making each other unhappy. There doesn't need to be a hero or a villain, you know, just split up! You don't need anyone's permission!

To be honest if my inlaws tried to dissuade him from marrying me due to me not coming from an appropriate CLASS, I too would have issued an ultimatum.

Them or me. Put your money where your mouth is.

Really sodiana ? You would feel entitled to insist a partner ceases all contact with their parents on your say so ?

Op you sound like you are living in your wife's reality. Did you ever ask the therapist if he actually did tell your wife it was all your fault, after previously agreeing with you ? I really doubt the cancer consultant said stress causes cancer. If you look hard enough on line you can find evidence for anything. Blaming cancer on you visiting your parents is ridiculous and abusive.

It's clear your wife is both emotionally and mentally abusing you. She sounds like a skilled manipulator. If you google emotional abuse some of the conversations you've had might start to make sense.

You didn't support your wife through bereavement and cancer, because of your resentment? That's harsh.

Maybe you should separate so she can find support elsewhere, and you can see your parents.

From the teenage children's point of view - and I remember it well - they are probably sick to death of living in an unhappy home and wish that you'd split up. (I did, in a similar horrible family environment.) They'll make their own minds up about what to do next.

you need to make some tough choices...

the. things that stick out for me:

youre having to use a response to military interrogation to deal with your wife.

you alone know how nasty or not your parents are. what do they say about your wife now? you need to make a decision about your parents. if you want to, see them, ... don't do it covertly... Otherwise you're giving into her manipulation.

are you happy for your kids to spend time with your parents, would you be happy for this to happen without you beinf there? {are they actually emotionally dangerous?}

do you love your wife...? if you don't, what are you waiting for? also her demands mean your kids have no r/s wirh their grandparents... if. I was your daughter I would be really upset..

Hi - I love John le Carre; he is the complete antithesis of James Bond and glamour. But it is disturbing that you are using a fantasy world of Cold War spies to guide you through your relationship difficulties. At the end of his books, things tend to crumble apart in a depressing way and there are never any winners.

You need a different approach - Shovetheholly has some good advice. You also need to educate yourself about relationship dynamics - there is a lot on the net, and a lot of book recommendations if you look around in Relationships. Take a step back and look at the way all the different people in your life are behaving, there actions and how these differ from their stated intentions.

Only you will be able to decide whether to rebuild the relationship you have, or to separate and build your life outside your marriage.

Shovetheholly's advice was terrible. As is SoDiana's. I'm glad to see quite a few posters are supporting the OP. This is one of the clearest cases of emotional abuse I've ever seen on here. But predictably there are a few members of the 'You have a penis so it must be your fault' brigade out to explain why it must be the OPs fault.

Blaming the OP for her cancer and banning him from contact with his family is a horrendous thing to do, and as a poster said earlier, if a woman was in this situation everybody would be telling her she was a huge victim of abuse, not blaming her for her predicament.

OP, how do your son's feel about their mother? She sounds controlling and difficult, is this affecting your sons as well? I would try sitting down and talking to them about the situation at home. I suspect if you split they might prefer to stay with you than their mother.

To answer your question, yes you are the victim of emotional abuse.
No adult human being should be told whom they can or cannot see.

Your wife has reduced you to the extent you have to sneak around just to communicate with your parents!
That is not normal.

"Shovetheholly's advice was terrible."

I'm RIGHT HERE!

Just kidding.

My response is very much coloured by a later post by the OP, in which he stated quite decisively that there had been abuse of his wife by his parents. Here's what he said:

'They (and I) can come over as quite condescending, social class should not matter but there is a significant class difference and I think this made her feel put down , But I don't my parents set out to do so.... the two worst things they have done are.. to entertain discussion with me about my relationship with my now wife (she says they should just have told me to go and sort it out with her) this was in the very early days - 25 + years ago"

So basically, they have been very condescending towards her, and they have tried to discuss and interfere with her marriage, presumably in a very negative way! I'm not surprised she is mega pissed off! I can also see why she might not want her own children to see her treated in this way!

I am probably projecting in this thread, as someone who is regularly subjected to class-based bullying from in laws. DH and I have had to learn how to get through it, and this is still an ongoing process. Generally we are finding that what works is maintaining a front so united that we cannot be prised apart even with a crowbar. We rehearse what we will do and say beforehand, we set boundaries and we reinforce them with steel. We also have solidarity and care from BIL and his lovely partner, who find their behaviour equally unacceptable on other grounds (they are basically PA bullies on many fronts and subjected both their kids to terrible bullying if they didn't get their own way. Interestingly, both boys took a LONG time to be able to have a stable relationship - very much a classic case of FOG).

I would never tell DH he couldn't see his parents. Not in a million years. But I did get the same 'Oh, they don't MEAN badly' line from him at first (minimising) and he was terrified of saying 'no' to them or of standing up to them in many ways - a FOG reaction, the legacy of his childhood. To make progress, we had to reach a position where we could agree that the behaviour wasn't OK (step 1) and we both had to improve our assertiveness and our ability to say 'no' (step 2, as part of this, DH had individual counselling to come to terms with his past, which really helped him to stand up to them).

Of course, I can only say 'this is what worked for us'. All couples are different. I hope my original post made clear that I do not believe that no contact is a solution in this case due to the wishes of the OP, and that the wife sounds as though she is also unacceptably PA.

SoDiana, where does it say his parents tried to 'dissuade' him from marrying her on the grounds of 'class'?

And shovetheholly since when was condescension abuse?

She cannot stop you seeing them!! Why are you allowing this? Of course she doesn't have to see them but just take your kids and visit them!! If she then chooses to leave you that is her completely unreasonable response.

I define abuse as something that isolates, humiliates, disrespects, intimidates or diminishes someone's identity and sense of self-respect.

So I would say it would be abusive to tell someone their viewpoint somehow counts for less because of their class. Or to correlate class with stupidity, or to ridicule and humiliate them because of their family or friends in a snobbish way. Or to patronise or talk down to them as if they didn't know about culture, books, current affairs, that kind of thing. All those things seem (to me personally) to be condescending and abusive because they could damage someone's sense of self-worth, and could really hurt their feelings, particularly if they are done in front of children.

Note also that the OP says that his wife felt 'put down' by the condescending remarks. It sounds grim for her, tbh.

I'm left feeling that whilst I could have supported my wife more in the past she is being unreasonable and I should leave, we have discussed this but I end up feeling as if I have been brainwashed, doubting the veracity of my views

This feeling brainwashed and doubting yourself is common in abusive relationships and it sounds as if your wife has convinced you that she's the victim, and you're not actually seeing how badly she's behaving.

However, do you think it's true that you didn't support her? Did you try?

The problem is that because she blamed her cancer on discovering you were in touch with your parents, it makes me wonder whether the not supporting her line is just more of the same game.

Either way, I agree with pps that in many ways it doesn't matter who's right and who's wrong. You're miserable together and you need to separate. I think you particuarly need to face the fact that this relationship will never be how you dream it could be.

Very odd to be asking that op wants from a thread on relationships, after he has described his relationship problems.

You're assuming what the wife says is true though, and based on other bollocks she has talked it may well not be.

It's quite possible that she's insecure about her roots and takes innocuous comments the wrong way. That's not uncommon, not just about class, about anything.

No, I'm taking the OP's word for it when he admits he is condescending to her! And when he says that they tried to interfere with his relationship (common sense suggests she wouldn't be majorly peed off if their reaction had been 'Oh she's wonderful, I think you should marry her straight away'!! I'm assuming the very opposite was the case.)

Like I've said in every single post on this thread, I do not think the wife is a blameless victim. It's just it strikes me as more of a 'toxic dynamic' kind of a situation where both sides are to some extent in the wrong than a clear victim-and-victimizer one.

But as I said, I'm posting as someone who suffers the kind of comments I mentioned above from my own in laws, so it would be hard for me not to project in the circumstances .

But she's the one who told him he and his parents are condescending. They might be, but given that in other circumstances she has had him feeling 'brainwashed' and doubting the validity of his own pov, it might not be true. Or it may true that she feels small when she's with them, but they're not actually doing anything intentionally to make her feel way.

A friend of mine's ex-wife told him for years that his parents were had no friends, and it was only at his dad's funeral where so many people turned up and told him how amazing his father had been to them, that he realised it wasn't true. She was very paranoid and insecure and she couldn't cope with his family so she isolated him. He's now married to someone lovely.

I understand that if your own PIL are snotty that you're going assume this case is the same, and to be fair it's not possible to get to the root of what's actually going on here.

We don't know if she told him that, or if it's a conclusion he's drawn from being told it by other people, or from his own observation of his parents. I think we can be certain that she has been upset by their behaviour, whether rightly or wrongly is anyone's guess!

As you so rightly say - we just can't get to the root of it. I think there's probably good reason for skepticism on both sides. You've argued your side well, and I've put mine - at the end of the day, it's an internet forum, and all we can work with is the inevitably partial account we have in front of us, which is never going to be conclusive.

I guess that there's merit in a poster getting a range of opinions. I know it's something I've found personally useful in the past. I hope this OP does too.